Bringing your family with you

Family Office

The Family Office is a part of the unit for Equal Opportunities and Diversity Management (CDM) that supports all students and employees of Saarland University with family and children. The main goal of the Family Office is to support for reconciliation of work and study with family.
The services offered include:

• Consultations and resources regarding care responsibilities, both childcare and eldercare.
• Information about pregnancy rights, parental leave & allowance, children allowance as well as other social support information with regards to the family situation.

Please refer to the website of the Family Office for more information: Family Office.

Schools

School education is compulsory in Saarland, which means that all children must complete at least nine years at school. School attendance is compulsory for all children who are at least six years old on or before 30 June, with enrolment taking place at the start of the next school year. A comprehensive list of schools in Saarbrücken is available on the official City of Saarbrücken website.

There is also an International School in Saarbrücken that offers an English-taught branch.

Child day-care and nursery facilities

Younger children can be cared for in a crèche (age group: 0-3 years) or a nursery (age group: 3-6 years). A child day-care centre (Kita) will typically have both crèche and nursery groups. Child minders generally only care for children up to three years old. Please also note that the hours in which child care can be provided will vary between day-care facilities.

There is a parental contribution ("Elternbeitrag") that has to be paid for childcare. These vary in amount depending on the childcare facility. If parents have a low income, the parental contribution for childcare can be taken over by the Youth Welfare Office.

Information on parental contributions (Website of the Saarbrücken Regional Association) in German

Child day-care facilities on campus

• Child day-care facility run by the Studierendenwerk Saarland
• Day-care facility for children of Saarland University employees
• Overview of child day-care facilities and programmes in Saarbrücken and the surrounding region
• Kita-Planer regional association

Child benefit payments (Kindergeld)

Under certain circumstances, foreign parents may apply for child benefit payments for children up to at least eighteen years of age. Applications for child benefit must be submitted to the local Family Benefits Office (Familienkasse), which is operated by the Federal Employment Agency.

• Information on child benefit for foreign residents
• Application forms and multilingual information leaflets from the Federal Employment Agency website